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theripetomatofarm

Specialize or generalize?

What do you all think is more profitable? I realize every market/region/country will be different, but interested to hear everyone's thoughts. Is it better to have something of everything, or is it better to do one or two things ridiculously well? Like is it more profitable to become "the pepper guy", or "the garlic guy", or would you see more traffic if you had everything under the sun?

Thoughts?

Comments (20)

  • Slimy_Okra
    9 years ago

    Interesting question. I'm still trying to figure that out but my limited experience so far suggests that a compromise is best. I am the only vendor for at least three or four products at my market. The rest of the items I offer are things that many vendors have, but they act as a hook to get people to look at my specialty veggies (and it also works in reverse).

  • theripetomatofarm
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    That's what I was thinking. Enough common vegetables to get people to look (and compare), but then be THE grower for some speciality stuff (speciality for your area).

  • Mark
    9 years ago

    Keep in mind that just as soon as you become "the grower" of that thing, someone else will come along and grow it also. Then you're both flooding the market and usually a price war starts.
    The other problem is by growing too much of one thing you take a big hit if one year something goes wrong.

    Personally I go for maximum diversity and try hard to be early on some crops i'd rather not compete on during main season (tomatoes, peppers, melons, potatoes, etc).
    Also, I honestly get bored growing certain things and prefer the challenge of many different crops with their different requirements and conditions.

    Pic of half of the booth last fall.

    -Mark

  • little_minnie
    9 years ago

    If you specialize and get into a large market with no one else selling that item that can be a very sweet spot. If a farm has CSA shares too they really have to diversify but for market you don't have to bring everything.

  • randy41_1
    9 years ago

    i'm considering trying to grow just one crop, baby ginger, to sell next year. i've been doing the wide variety for a long time which to me is a lot more work and pretty much keeps you from doing anything else. i have the security of not really needing the money (social security). i would sell it retail and wholesale. if the numbers work as they are supposed to i should be able to make as much or more money as i can now without having to harvest and go to the market every week. i had no trouble at all selling the amount i grew this year at a small and slow market.

  • theripetomatofarm
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Excellent feedback and ideas guys. I can already tell there is no one right answer and depends on 1) what type of grower you are (and want to be) and 2) what your local market will bear.

  • jrslick (North Central Kansas, Zone 5B)
    9 years ago

    It depends on your market. I can not specialize, unless I started selling wholesale. At all my markets there is a point at which you will not sell any more of one crop, regardless of price. I feel fairly confident I know where most of those "limit points" are. I try to grow to those limits. It has taken me several years to determine them, but now what I grow, is what I will sell each week. Now there are exceptions, early tomatoes, first melons, even early cucumbers and zucchini.

    I use this knowledge to my advantage, especially during the school year. For example, I always have to pick all the zucchini, cucumbers and tomatoes before each market, even if it is more than I can sell (or they get too big or go bad). But I know that I can sell up to 3 or 4 bags (t-shirt plastic bags) of bell peppers, 30-40 pounds of carrots, 12-15 bags of kale, 20-25 heads of lettuce and 25 bunches of radishes. With these amounts, I have some left on a bad day or sell out near the end of the market. I also know that I can sell XXX baskets of cherry tomatoes and then i can pick that amount and move on to another crop to pick. This is one way I can manage my time.

    The only way for me to make more money is to grow a new crop after I have maxed out my demand for a certain product.

    Jay

  • 2ajsmama
    9 years ago

    So Jay, just wondering, I know you keep growing tomatoes (and even succession plant them so you can have them later in the year). Are there any crops you grow early (like zucchini) and then pull, plant something else that no one else has when they all have zucchini? And then are there some (maybe zucchini, maybe not) that you put back in for harvest when the other vendors' only planting is running out?

    You've got a lot more space (esp. in tunnels) than I do, I'm really trying to learn the markets here and work on succession planting. For example, I can't sell kale, chard, etc. since by the time markets open, the people who have CSAs are tired of them, and it seems no one else wants them either. So I don't know that it's worth growing those any more, until/unless I find a longer-season market or start my own CSA.

    The OP has a lot less space than I do, so does the guy who started the newbie thread so succession planting and finding that niche is even more important for them.

    I've been trying to become "The Tomato Lady" (and maybe unusual peppers too) but it hasn't really worked out.

  • little_minnie
    9 years ago

    Garlic would be a good crop to specialize in and after you try to sell at market you can sell for seed. Seed garlic is in high demand. I was heading toward garlic selling before we got a disease in the area and I am still recovering.

  • boulderbelt
    9 years ago

    I have become the garlic lady mainly due to the fact the state Farm Bureau magazine did an article on our garlic this past summer so now a lot of people believe we know more about garlic than anyone. We do grow around 4K annually and have grown it for about 18 years but i know people who know and grow a lot more than we do.

  • sandy0225
    9 years ago

    I'd say both, specialize and generalize if you have the time and area to do so. I try to grow enough of the general things like tomatoes, zucchini, and peppers to have them all summer. I also have a stand at the house where I sell veggies too. I succession plant tomatoes and zucchini, the peppers run all summer anyway. I grow kale all season long and rhubarb all summer long because I have a lot of plants and keep it irrigated and fertilized, and cut it all summer long. Then I have my specialty crops that I grow until I run out of them like celery, leeks, garlic, onions, cucumbers, cilantro on and off all summer, depending on how it grows, cabbage and broccoli and brussels sprouts. I have hot peppers of many varieties from the time they start getting ripe, until frost. I'm the only one selling carolina reapers and butch t trinidad scorpions and many of the other super hot peppers at the market, and ghost peppers by the singles or pints.I do purchase some things from the produce auction here because we are allowed to sell 51% your grown, and 49% local purchased, and I do take advantage of that to get canteloupes, watermelons, cucumbers when I don't have them, and more pumpkins and squash and onions than I grow. However I'll tell people which are which, I don't pretend that I grow them all , like some people do. I get corn most of the summer from two of my friends that are growing it and I always tell people whether it's Jack's corn or Wes's corn and they love knowing which one it comes from. They sell me enough corn to more than recoup their expense in growing it and then they have all the free corn they want, I have corn to sell, and they know when to pick it for market so we always have fresh corn to sell. It's awesome!
    Then at the winter market I have houseplants, storage veggies and if I have room in the heated greenhouse, some lettuce or some kind of specialty greens in January-Feb when others don't have them.
    Of course in the spring all I bring is plants, because that's what I really like to do! Fall I grow mums too, a different kind than others around here are growing.

  • 2ajsmama
    9 years ago

    Wow, Sandy you sure do grow a lot? How many GHs/how much heated sf do you have?

    Lucy - thanks for jumping in on garlic - I never thought of growing that to sell (thought I might put in some for us) b/c there is a place called The Garlic Farm here in town and I figured I could never compete - but he doesn't go to market, just sells from the farm (he does heirloom tomatoes, other high-season veggies and of course onions, etc. too). I wonder if it's too late to plant (we had a frost last night, I covered the last of my peppers I'm trying to get to color break, but it's going to warm up the next few days)? Of course I have to find seed ASAP!

  • sandy0225
    9 years ago

    4 greenhouses, one 26x96, one 30x30, one 26x36, one small one on the house 10x20. all heated in season. I overwinter tropicals and houseplants in the 30x30, and play all year in the 10x20. the 26X36 is all tomato plants in the spring, overwintering for hostas and perennials in winter and fall, swimming pool display in summer...we put some tropical plants around it.
    you want to plant garlic well after first frost. here we can plant in indiana up into December if the ground isn't frozen. I like to put it in and then add 2' or so of straw over the top to keep down weeds and keep it from heaving up and down with freezes.

    Here is a link that might be useful:

  • jrslick (North Central Kansas, Zone 5B)
    9 years ago

    Aj's: To answer your questions about zucchini. We succession plant every month or so, from April til August. Our first and sometimes the last zucchini is in a movable tunnel. This year I opted to plant outside and it is still cranking out zucchini.

    The biggest plantings are always the first two, then we plant smaller plantings in June and July, but another big one in August. Zucchini sales always pick up in late August/Early September and hold steady all fall long.

    The tricky part is knowing how much to plant. Also making yourself plant it even when you have way to much now. Also planting before you ever pick anything. I usually have planted 4 plantings of tomatoes before I pick a single one.

    I don't usually tear out a planting unless it isn't producing. If I am picking from it, I let it stick around until the next newest planting is producing. I will hold off on planting areas of our farm until later in the season.

    Jay

  • 2ajsmama
    9 years ago

    What I was wondering was if you plant them in 1 area, and then plant something else there when you do pull them (or yeah, pull if they're not producing much or everyone else has them and you need the space for something else), and if so what do you tend to follow them with?

    You did answer my other ?, I guess you do plant some to have when everyone else does. I guess the real trick there as you say is how much to plant - maybe you want to have some, but you don't want to flood the market.

    I don't know if I have enough rows prepped to do that - and of course I only have about 500sf of (growing) tunnel space.

  • jrslick (North Central Kansas, Zone 5B)
    9 years ago

    Yes I move them around. Especially Zucchini and cucumbers. I will move my plantings as far apart as possible, if possible. One year my rotations and space didn't allow for that, so I had 8, hundred foot rows and planted two to zucchini and two to cucumbers then did the same thing a month later. Luckily it wasn't a bad bug year.

    Yes when I tear out things, I usually replant something or work up the ground and let it sit. Next year I will be trying to put in some buckwheat as a cover crop between plantings (if time allows it). This springs zucchini is now this falls turnips, radishes and tatsoi. If I don't harvest the fall stuff, it will be left as a cover crop. The cucumber space is more tatsoi, arugula and spinach.

    The outside tomatoes and peppers are gone and are now planted to a cover crop. The onions are now in turnips, rutabegas and kale.

    The garlic beds are fall zucchini and cucumbers. The melons are now in carrots or cover crops.

    Spring potatoes are now in fall radishes, turnips, daikons, and rutabegas.

    I try to rotate things to a different family of stuff and alternate heavy and light feeders (but it doesn't always work out).

    Jay

  • little_minnie
    9 years ago

    I haven't planted garlic yet. We have had amazing weather lately and I plan to get manure this week, borrow a tiller that will start and then plant garlic. My tiller never starts this time of year.

    As for successions. Within a season I like to keep the crops together for 2 reasons. 1, it is easier to harvest that way and 2. it makes rotation somewhere new the next year possible. I put in a row of summer squash next to the onion beds in May. One bed of onions I plant close together to pull as spring onions. I pull the inner ones first and then mid June I transplant in the second summer squash. All of this is in black plastic. Then both rows of summer squash can be picked together, I think that was the question. I pulled the rest of the onions and did fall greens seeded there and pulled the summer squash and did clover there.

  • Slimy_Okra
    9 years ago

    I'm curious about rotations...if you plant nightshades in the summer in a bed, and follow it up with brassicas in fall and beets in spring, does that count as sufficient rotation if you plant nightshades agains the following summer?

  • sandy0225
    9 years ago

    I've found with planting multiple times during the summer, the rotation hasn't been as important with the nightshades. I mean the tomatoes get the early blight, but if you don't need them to produce all summer long anyway, you still get plenty off them before they're done. They get early blight even if I rotate them to an entirely new garden anyway. I think it's just in the air here.
    I'm doing hybrid bell peppers, I do have a little trouble with a few of the hot peppers that aren't hybrids from time to time, but if you have a 100 foot row of hot peppers, there's always something left to pick...

  • Mark
    9 years ago

    To avoid hijacking this thread, I'm starting a new one for crop rotation for anyone interested.

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